Assessment practices in grade 9 academic and applied mathematics

Curriculum reform in Ontario secondary schools proposed new methods for assessing student achievement as well as a new streaming model that separates students based on their learning needs. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers' assessment practices in Ontario's grade 9 Academic and Applied mathematics programs in the context of recent changes in mathematics education. A questionnaire was distributed to grade 9 mathematics teachers attending a provincial mathematics conference. The results were summarized according to descriptive and inferential statistical methods. Analysis revealed that teachers were adopting some assessment philosophies proposed in the Ontario Ministry of Education Program Planning and Assessment guidelines. The method teachers reported they were integrating measures of student learning reflected assessment guidelines as did the separation of learning skills from student achievement, except for the homework learning skill. A number of teachers reported they continued to include the assessment of homework accuracy in with a student's academic achievement. Guidelines calling for reporting students' most recent and most consistent evidence of achievement were not widely followed or understood. With respect to differences in assessment practices between the two streams, a significant difference was found in teachers' reported assessment practices that called for reporting a student's most recent and most consistent evidence of achievement and the method in which teachers integrate various measures of student achievement to determine a student's final grade.